15 top product discovery tools for product teams

New product development plays a crucial role in business growth and maintaining a competitive edge in your industry.

Product discovery is a vital part of the process. It involves researching your target audience to understand user needs, preferences, and pain points to ensure your product idea is viable.

Every business faces risks when developing a new product. Discovery provides valid data to eliminate these risks. Companies need a way to collect this data as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible, and that’s where product discovery tools come into play. They are the ideal way to streamline the process and make it as accurate and efficient as possible.

Product discovery tools are software solutions offering a range of features that help development teams identify, analyze, and validate potential product opportunities. They can be used to consolidate user data, prioritize features, guide product roadmaps, and facilitate user testing.

By empowering product teams to efficiently gather and analyze customer data, these tools enable strategic decision-making to guide the development of a product that truly meets the needs of your target audience.

What comes before product discovery?

Ideation comes before product discovery. An individual or team develops an idea that could be a new solution to a problem or an improved solution to an existing problem or process.

Product discovery is the process used to validate this idea. When used before and during development, it can streamline the process and eliminate risks.

How do you measure product discovery?

Measuring the product discovery process involves gathering data. Your data should include key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure progress toward discovery goals and the time required to meet them.

Finding product discovery tools that help gather and analyze such data can help you streamline the discovery process.

When to use product discovery

Since product discovery is used to validate an idea, it’s best to employ it early in the development process.

Ideally, teams will begin conducting discovery research before creating the product roadmap to use actionable data for feature prioritization.

Various types of product discovery tools are available to meet the needs of different markets and industries. Some tools are more focused on product research, while others offer more insight into user behaviors and specific pain points.

Learning more about the different product discovery tools can help you choose a tool or combination of tools that best fits your research goals.

Product discovery tools typically fall under the following five categories:

User research tools

User research allows development teams to gather a wealth of data about their company’s target market and use insights to make informed decisions. These tools can help you understand the state of your target market by collecting user feedback about pain points, UX preferences, desired features, and more.

Various research tools support interviews, surveys, and user testing to provide valid data to back choices about features and solutions, giving your product the best chance of meeting user needs.

Analytics tools

Research teams gather qualitative and quantitative data to validate products most likely to appeal to customers. Analytics tools track KPIs to see how users interact with products and which features are most viable. You can use data like page views, conversions, and user flows to fine-tune features and develop an improved user experience.

Experimentation tools

Product development is a multi-step process that requires continuous testing to produce the design and features most likely to appeal to your target audience. Experimentation tools are used to test different product ideas and designs through various experimental research methods.

Voice of customer tools

Voice of customer (VOC) tools are used to gather data directly from your target audience and analyze customer feedback. They use methods including sentiment analysis, customer satisfaction surveys, and social media monitoring to investigate customer needs, expectations, and desires. 

You can take this information and use it to identify changing needs and prioritize features that will improve product and market fit.

Project management and training tools

These tools are used to streamline and improve the product discovery process for ideal efficiency and cost-effectiveness. They help you automate workflows, organize tasks, and collaborate to ensure teams meet deadlines and stay informed throughout the process.

With a plethora of product discovery tools available to choose from, it can be difficult to determine which will best meet your needs.

We’ve compiled a list of some of the top product discovery tools from a range of categories to help you understand the best features of each and select those that are most likely to improve your process.

Dovetail

Dovetail is a research platform and active data analysis tool that helps teams centralize, organize, analyze, and collaborate on user research data across their organization. It’s a comprehensive insights hub that acts as a single source of truth for designers, researchers, product managers, and sales professionals.

Users can store all customer data in a searchable user database and instantly turn usability tests, interviews, and feedback into insights that inform design decisions. AI automation uncovers themes across data and finds customer problems and opportunities that enable designers to rapidly develop improved solutions.

G2 rating: 4.5 stars

Key features:

• Simple, searchable storage that acts as a single source of truth for all your customer data

• Integrations with your favorite tools to easily import data and connect your entire workflow

• Global tags to build a shared knowledge base

• Templates to standardize research across your organization

• Canvas view to cluster review highlights and uncover customer themes

• Insights to tie all data together and inform decision-making

• Transcription for audio and video that summarizes interactions and classifies data into groups

• Reels created by automatically stitching data together with no video editing skills required

• Magic redact to protect data privacy by blurring video, audio, and text

Pricing:

Dovetail offers the following plans:

• A free plan

• Professional plan for $29 per month (unlimited users)

• Enterprise plans in which custom pricing is determined through a consultation

Miro

Miro is a collaborative online whiteboard platform for brainstorming, mapping user journeys, and conducting design sprints. The visual workspace enables distributed teams to collaborate and use data to develop strategy, design products and services, and manage processes.

G2 rating: 4.7 stars

Key features:

• Includes tools for diagramming, wireframing, brainstorming, journey mapping, product planning, goal setting, and process mapping

• Integrations with hundreds of tools to facilitate streamlined workflows

• Templates for prototypes, product roadmaps, and customer journeys

• AI-powered tools to speed up everyday tasks

• Talktrack to record interactive video walkthroughs of your data

Pricing:

In addition to its free plan, Miro offers the following:

• Starter plan at $8 per month/member

• Business plan starting at $16 per month/member

• Enterprise plan with custom pricing

Aha!

Aha! is product roadmap software that helps teams prioritize features, plan releases, and track progress. It’s designed to be a complete solution for product development that matches the way your product development team works.

Users can mix and match plans to get the features they need.

G2 rating: 4.4 stars

Key features:

• Visual roadmaps to advise strategy and prioritize features

• Idea management tool to crowdsource feedback, gain customer insights, and prioritize features

• Whiteboards for brainstorming, defining user flows, and collaborating

• Self-serve knowledge bases to share product documents

• Agile tools that link strategy to delivery

Pricing:

Aha! offers pricing plans designed to enable users to build custom solutions.

• Aha! Develop starting at $9 per user/month

• Aha! Whiteboards starting at $9 per user/month

• Aha! Knowledge starting at $39 per user/month

• Aha! Ideas starting at $39 per user/month

• Aha! Roadmaps (the complete solution) starting at $59 per user/month

Productboard

Productboard is a customer-driven product management platform for prioritizing what to build next based on user feedback. Users can collect feature requests, organize feedback, and use data to create roadmaps.

G2 rating: 4.3 stars

Key features:

• Feedback collection from multiple sources

• AI-generated feature request summaries

• Customizable roadmap templates for planning product goals based on different elements

• Integration with multiple software tools for optimized workflows

• A public portal to share product plans with customers

Pricing:

Productboard offers the following plans:

• Free plan

• Essentials plan costing $19 per user/month

• Pro plan costing $59 per user/month

• Enterprise plan with custom pricing determined during consultation

• Optional add-on AI plan for $20 per user/month

All Productboard plans are billed annually.

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a market research tool for creating surveys and collecting customer feedback, enabling you to understand customer needs and preferences.

You can conduct market research by building custom surveys based on your industry and product development goals. AI-fueled insights simplify analysis and improve communications.

G2 rating: 4.4 stars

Key features:

• Hundreds of survey templates to meet different user data needs

• AI-powered survey insights for faster analysis

• Support for multiple languages

• Idea screening

• Scoring tools to estimate survey success

Pricing:

SurveyMonkey offers three pricing plans:

• The Individual Advantage plan for $39 per month

• The Team Advantage plan for $25 per user/month

• The Team Premier plan for $75 per user/month

All plans are billed annually.

Typeform

Typeform is a user-friendly survey tool that allows for more engaging and conversational forms and surveys to provide data that guides product development. You can create and distribute interactive and engaging surveys to collect user feedback and market research data.

A video tool is also available for you to create and conduct interviews.

G2 rating: 4.5 stars

Key features:

• Customizable templates that allow you to tailor your forms to your brand

• Intuitive interface with drag-and-drop tools to make it easy for beginners and less tech-savvy users

• Reports with visual representations of metrics like views, submissions, completion rate percentage, and time to completion

• Integration with a variety of apps to improve workflows and data management

Pricing:

Typeform offers the following four core plans:

• Basic for $25/month

• Plus for $50/month

• Business for $83/month

• Enterprise with custom pricing determined upon consultation

UserTesting

UserTesting is a platform that provides real-time feedback from users on product prototypes, helping teams understand usability issues and improve solutions. Users can conduct usability tests with users interacting with their app or website and use product discovery tools to view and understand user behavior and preferences through video recordings, surveys, and feedback.

G2 rating: 4.5 stars

Key features:

• Data visualization for improved insights

• AI-powered analysis for faster insights and easy sharing and collaboration

• Multiple integration options for sharing insights in real-time

• Usability testing for websites and prototypes

Pricing:

UserTesting offers a free trial and Advanced and Ultimate plans. You’ll need to contact them for customized pricing.

Maze

Maze is a rapid testing platform that allows teams to quickly validate design decisions with real users. It’s ideal for testing concepts and evaluating usability at all stages of the product development process.

The platform supports usability testing, live website testing, and prototype testing. Drag-and-drop functionality and testing templates enable all team members to create and share tests regardless of their technical expertise.

G2 rating: 4.5 stars

Key features:

• Template library for immediate data collection with a minimal learning curve

• Integration with a variety of tools

• Tester’s panel to replicate your user personas or target audience

• Reach feature to send tests and surveys to existing customers

• Live website testing to run usability tests on live sites

• Reports created by user responses

Pricing:

Maze offers the following plans:

• Free plan

• Professional plan for $75 per month

• Organizational plans with custom pricing determined via a consultation

Mixpanel

Mixpanel is an advanced analytics tool that tracks user interactions and behaviors within products. Users can monitor product applications to analyze actions or steps taken by users and visitors. As a result, teams can better measure important data, make decisions swiftly, and build better products with data-backed choices.

G2 rating: 4.6 stars

Key features:

• Interactive reports for improved collaboration

• Intuitive dashboards that empower all team members and stakeholders to instantly access data

• A structured database to serve as a single source of truth

• Data unification to connect business data and improve analysis

Pricing:

Mixpanel offers the following plans:

• Free plan

• Growth plan starting at $28/month

• Enterprise plan with custom pricing based on a consultation

Amplitude

Amplitude is a product analytics tool offering insights into user behavior to support data-driven decisions. Users can track events, user flows, and engagement and leverage data to gain insights into informed product discovery.

AI improves data analysis to quickly provide answers to questions about user preferences.

G2 rating: 4.5 stars

Key features:

• Multiple integrations to support streamlined workflows

• Integrated A/B testing to determine user preferences

• AI support

• Data quality checks to enable real-time solutions to pressing issues

• Data unification with behavioral analytics and AI automation to speed up analysis and provide fast answers

• Session replay to reconstruct digital experiences and gain customer insights

Pricing:

Amplitude offers the following plans:

• Free plan

• Plus plan starting at $49/month

• Growth and Enterprise plans with custom pricing upon consultation with the sales team

Hotjar

Hotjar is a product analytics and event tracking tool providing heatmaps, session recordings, and feedback polls. These enable you to understand user behavior on websites and apps.

You can track interactions like mouse movements, clicks, and scrolls and view detailed heatmaps that enable you and your team to measure user engagement.

The tool also offers form analysis to measure completion rates for surveys.

G2 rating: 4.3 stars

Key features:

• Heatmaps and session recordings to track user movements and preferences

• User interviews and surveys for direct feedback

• Conversion funnels to identify issues early and see exactly where users are dropping off

• Integrations with a variety of tools to improve user workflows

• User testing recruitment widget to recruit test participants

Pricing:

Hotjar offers the following plans:

• Basic (free) plan

• Plus plan for $32/month

• Business plan for $80/month

• Scale plan for $171/month

They also provide an option for customers to mix and match products and plans for custom pricing.

Airfocus

Airfocus is a prioritization and roadmapping tool that helps teams understand user interactions and gather in-app feedback.

It’s designed specifically for product teams to use for market-facing products, internal product management, and IT portfolio management. It helps you understand user needs, prioritize features, and align teams around clear roadmaps.

G2 rating: 4.4 stars

Key features:

• Ready-to-use templates to guide user research

• Roadmaps to set a clear direction

• Linking that connects product work to company objectives and key results (OKRs)

• Scoring frameworks for improved prioritization

• Centralized customer feedback gathered from various channels to improve insights and inform product discovery

Pricing:

A free 14-day trial provides users with access to features and services from all plans. Airfocus then offers users three further pricing plans:

• The Core plan for $59 per editor/month when billed yearly or $74 when billed monthly

• The Scale plan and Enterprise plan, both with custom billing, determined with a consultation

Users can also enhance existing plans with optional add-ons. 

Qualtrics

Qualtrics is an experience management platform for gathering customer feedback through surveys and analyzing results.

Development teams can split users into segments and track behavior to understand how different user demographics perceive the product. AI tools help fast-track the discovery process and prevent errors.

With the ability to bring feedback from multiple sources together, you can get a bird’s-eye view across the customer experience, end to end.

G2 rating: 4.4 stars

Key features:

• Automated analytics and reporting for improved insights

• Access to research and advanced analytics specialists

• Product discovery tool to monitor industry and market trends and capitalize on upcoming opportunities

• Session replays to better understand customer behavior

Pricing:

Qualtrics offers a range of products and features to meet varied user needs. Pricing for each is available on request from the website’s pricing page.

Figma

Figma is a cloud-based collaborative design tool that allows teams to prototype and gather feedback on designs in real time.

Users can develop product ideas and build wireframes and interactive prototypes to showcase the ideas and improve collaboration. Stakeholders can also interact with prototypes and provide feedback to influence next steps and feature prioritization.

G2 rating: 4.7 stars

Key features:

• Low- and high-fidelity prototyping

• Browser-based to allow teams to create, edit, and share decisions without software installation

• Integration with FigJam to directly copy and paste designs into Figma

• Reusable components and styles that help teams maintain consistency across projects

• Integrations with popular design tools

• User portal to directly engage with users

Pricing:

Figma offers the following plans:

• Starter Team (free) plan

• Professional Team plan for $15 per seat/month

• Organization plan for $45 per seat/month (billed annually)

• Enterprise plan for $75 per seat/month (billed annually)

Organization and Enterprise plans also feature reduced prices for Dev Mode only.

Craft.io

Craft.io is a product management tool that helps teams plan, prioritize, and manage their product backlog based on user research and feedback.

The platform provides a single source of truth where product development teams can develop strategies, prioritize tasks, monitor progress, and collaborate. You can use it to gather information, create roadmaps, and standardize processes to help your company become more aligned.

G2 rating: 4.5 stars

Key features:

• A dedicated portal to collect, tag, and track user feedback

• Integrations with development tools to streamline workflows and sync progress with strategic roadmaps

• Customizable product backlog where users can build, view, and organize a product backlog using a logical hierarchy

• Custom prioritization features to represent your organization’s unique priorities

• Portfolio management supported by collaboration features to enable contributions from multiple teams

Pricing:

Craft.io offers customers three pricing plans to choose from:

• Starter plan for $19 per editor/month

• Pro plan for $79 per editor/month

• Enterprise plan with custom billing determined via a consultation

Users can sign up for a 14-day free trial with access to the Pro plan’s functionality.

*Product ratings are accurate as of October 2024.